La Grange Facing Budget & Sewer Decisions
In one of the longest La Grange City Council meetings in recent memory Monday, the council and new city manager Fred Bell crunched a lot of numbers late into the night as they try to hammer out the city budget for 2023-2024.
After more than two decades of former city manager Shawn Raborn overseeing the city budget process, Bell said he’s trying to get various city department heads more involved in the city budget planning process – but there was quite a gap between proposed expenses and proposed revenue.
“There’s lot of needs and wants here,” Bell told the council. “When you see this again, it’s going to be much leaner.”
Bell did say to the council that he wants to make giving city employees a five-percent raise a priority.
In other action at Monday’s meeting:
• Kristi Bauer the Executive Director of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Fayette, Bastrop and Lee Counties gave a report to council about her organization’s efforts to advocate on behalf of local abused and neglected children.
CASA annually asks for funding from numerous organizations in the three-county area, the City of La Grange included. The volunteer-fueled organization (which has 15 volunteers currently in Fayette County) requested $4,500 this year.
Bauer told the council that there has been a stark drop in the number of kids removed from homes for abuse or neglect this year – just 13 kids in Fayette County so far in 2023 down from 53 in 2022. She said this is a result of state rule changes that make it more difficult for Child Protective Services to remove children form their homes.
“We certainly don’t want then to have to remove kids from their homes, but we want them to be with safe families,” Bauer said.
• There was lengthy discussion about whether or not the city should proceed with a plan four years in the making to extend sewer service west of town along Highway 71 into areas beyond the city limits. There are numerous businesses in that area that have expressed interest in hooking into city sewer services if available. The city has won a $1.8 million grant to help fund the project – if they decide to do it.
But the total cost of such a project has now ballooned to at least $3.2 million. Bradley Loehr of BEFCO Engineering outlined the challenges of the project to council members Monday. He pointed out that potential upgrades to the existing sewer infrastructure on the west side of town might be needed to handle the additional expansion. Council took no action but several council members expressed doubts about going forward with the project. Loehr was going to bring a more detailed cost analysis to the council at a future meeting.
• The council authorized staff to contract with BEFCO Engineering for services to repair the parking lot under the Business 71 bridge.
• The council awarded $3,334 to the La Grange Baseball Association to pay for one-third of the cost of new netting in front of the stands at Voelkel/Koether Field at the fairgrounds. The Baseball Association paid for the rest of the $10,000 project.